


First Meetings

by MissFiction



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cullen Rutherford Fluff, Cullen Rutherford is a NERD, F/M, First Meetings, Friendship/Love, Love at First Sight, Mild Sexual Content, Nothing explicit... yet?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 13:56:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4394495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissFiction/pseuds/MissFiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen Rutherford is dragged to a bar by his eager coworkers and meets a beautiful woman. Shockingly, she seems to be interested in him, too. feat. Amelie Trevelyan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Meetings

When Cullen woke it was to a stream of sunlight shining directly into his eyes. It was almost certainly some ungodly early hour he was sure though the throbbing in his skull would not yet allow him to roll and check the time. He was, at the very least, certain that his morning routine was ruined.

As he sat up he noticed that his coworkers were sleeping on various other pieces of furniture in the next room, looking dead to the world around them. He could see the couches from his wide-open bedroom door, which each held the body of a fully grown person. At the very edge of his field of vision he could also see Evelyn, his coworker and childhood friend Alistair's long term girlfriend, moving cheerfully around the kitchen as well, bouncing around the stove. Cullen was fairly certain that she had out drank all of them and yet she seemed the least affected by hangover.

The blond could not say the same for himself.

His tongue felt heavy in his unbelievably dry mouth, head was swimming as he blinked blearily around the room, looking for clues about the evening before. He noticed bemusedly that he was still completely dressed, but he had no memory of clambering in to bed the night before. In fact, he realized with a start, he could not really recall the majority of the night before at all. He had been abandoned by the party of his work friends at the bar in favour of the dance floor and then...?

Nothing. Try as he might, Cullen couldn't access the memory.

Pans clattered noisily followed by whispered curses. With a pained groan, Cullen reluctantly forced himself to sit up in the bed and immediately cradled his head. Throwing the covers aside, which were not so much pulled over him and more so just knotted around his legs, he used the momentum to shut the bloody curtains and block out the damned sun.

As he moved in to the living room he did the same with all the other windows until the four of them were in the dark. Evelyn looked at him guiltily from a mess of kitchenware. Cullen just rubbed his temples.

He sighed to the general company, “Everyone here and accounted for?”

Alistair sat up on the small couch immediately, with a whine as he did so. Evelyn chuckled and moved around the couch to press a kiss to his temple, stealthily leaving her mess of pans behind.

“Present,” she chuckled for both of them, straightening the blonds hair affectionately with her fingers. Cullen turned his gaze away from them, flushing slightly.

Marian Hawke didn't move from her spot on the other couch, but snored loudly.

“Fantastic,” mumbled Cullen. “I am never letting any of you talk me in to going out again.” He groused, moving to the kitchen and putting on a pot of coffee.

After a briefly pause and an exchange of sly looks with his lover, Alistair got up and followed him, leaning his forearms on the counter. “Seemed like you had a good time last night to me!” he teased. “Didn't he look like he was having fun, darling?”

“Oh yes!” Evelyn agreed, clasping her hands together and joining them in the small kitchen. “Cullen and his new lady-friend, I nearly forgot! Who was she, Cullen?”

His confusion must have been plainly written on his face, because when he merely stared blankly at the couple they exchanged another glance, this time more concerned. Alistair's expression quickly shifted into a teasing grin. “You mean you spent practically the whole night with her and you didn't even ask her for her name? Maker, and I thought I was bad with women.”

“What on Earth are you two on about now?” sighed Cullen, resigning himself to the teasing. Once the two of them got going there was no stopping them, they just fed off of each other's energy and thrived off reactions anyways.

Evelyn gasped, looking crestfallen. “You really don't remember, do you?! You really seemed to hit it off with her too! _Oh_ , that's a real shame. She was a pretty lil' thing, too. And it's been so long since you've had a date with anyone... I'm just saying!” She added when Cullen looked offended, and Alistair nodded thoughtfully.

The two of them pushed away and left Cullen standing there looking dumbfounded with his cup of coffee gripped tight in his hand. Had he met someone last night? He couldn't recall, no matter how he tried to summon the memory from last night. He had definitely had way too much to drink, there was no doubt about that. Despite himself he couldn't help his curiosity; he ran one hand through his hair and sighed heavily again.

“I have no recollection of last night after you left me at the bar. You're going to have to fill me in,” he admitted, knowing that they would never let him live it down anyways. “Did I do something? Please tell me I didn't embarrass myself too badly.”

Somewhere during their conversation Marian had woken up and was staring at them from below a fringe of tangled hair that hung in her face and stuck out haphazardly in the back. She didn't say a word but snorted at his question. He grew increasingly nervous and repeated himself. They seemed to be withholding something, to say the least.

“Not _embarrassing_ , no,” Evelyn replied thoughtfully, diplomatic as always. “You were sort of gazing at her like she was the sun and the moon, but you weren't inappropriate. It was sort of cute, actually. She seemed to be interested in you too, so it definitely was _not_ as bad as it could have been.”

That sounded _extremely_ embarrassing! He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed a defeated “Maker's breath...”

Which was precisely when Marian began to shout.

“Your arm!!!” she yelled, leaping to her feet and standing on the sofa. “No, look– no, on your–! Pull your sleeve up, you idiot, and look! That's a _phone number!_ Did she seriously write her phone number on you? That's some of the corniest shit I've ever seen!”

Evelyn whooped, clapping her hands, and Alistair fished his cellphone out of his pocket without a word. He thrust it in to Cullen's unwilling hands, who fumbled with it and nearly dropped on his hardwood floor.

“Call it, call it!” they chanted in unison. Cullen flushed red, shushing them. He couldn't remember at all for himself, but his friends seemed to think he had hit it off with whoever this woman was... and it couldn't do any harm, could it? He stared at the bold black number on his pale skin. If she really had written her number on his arm she must have thought... _something_ good about him? Though he truly hated to admit it because it was almost always true, Evelyn was right. It had been ages since anyone had been interested in him and vice versa. 

“I'll call,” he decided, though hesitant, immediately met with more shouting. “Just to see if it was something important!” He cringed at the noise, and Alistair looked as though he regretted it a little as well, though likely only due to his own hangover and not at all for the principle. “But you all have to promise you will not eavesdrop.”

Evelyn and Marian laughed out loud, but crossed their hearts in promise. Cullen pretended he did _not_ see them wink at each other. He took Alistair's phone and moved to the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind him.

o O o

He stared in the mirror for several minutes, just looking at his reflection and then at the phone number on his arm. This was ridiculous. What on Earth did he expect to happen? He would call up a woman he had met while he was drunk and they would... _what_? Go for coffee? That sounded like the plot of some horrible romantic comedy, honestly. Still he couldn't help the burgeoning curiosity in his chest that caused his heart to race.

He dialled with shaking hands.

Then he hung up.

Cullen stared at himself harder, willing himself to stop being such a child. There was no sense in just washing the number away without finding out who was at the other end, he told himself. He punched in the numbers again, and ignored the twisting feeling in his gut that told him to bail out on the call again. His heart almost stopped when the ringing did.

A female voice answered, sounding cheerful despite the early hour. 

Her voice triggered some sense of familiarity in the back of his mind, nothing substantial and yet undeniably present. Cullen found his mouth felt as though it had been filled with sand in response. He ran his tongue over equally dry lips and pushed loose hairs away from his forehead for a moment before floundering for words.

“... Who is this?” he asked. The voice had thrown him; it  _ had _ tickled something in the back of his memory but he could not quite get a hold of it and draw it forward. But then the voice laughed. A soft chuckle that caused a shiver to run down his spine. All he could do was wrack his brain for anything he could say that could possibly get her to do it again. 

“ _ You _ called  _ me _ ,” she pointed out. Her amusement was palpable, Cullen could practically hear her smile. His imagination supplemented a sweet smile and dark eyes that saw right through him, dark auburn hair that trailed down slim shoulders and tapered somewhere past her waist. His skin tingled along his shoulders and down the back of his neck towards his spine.

“This wouldn't happen to be Cullen, would it? I didn't get your last name...” she asked when he failed to respond, and dare he say she almost sounded hopeful? He hoped that wasn't a fabrication of his own imagination.

He could not help the warm tone his voice took, “It is, actually...”

She began rambling animatedly. Her enthusiasm was contagious, to say the least.

As if in a flood, the night before suddenly came rushing back.

o O o

_ The club atmosphere was certainly not what Cullen would have picked to relax with his coworkers after a long week of work. To be complete honest, his idea of relaxation usually did not involve his coworkers at all. He wasn't quite sure how they had convinced him to join them this time when he was usually very diligent about politely declining and turning in early, but here he was. Perched at the bar, whiskey on the rocks gripped tight in his hand, and an electronic beat that surely would have enhanced the throbbing in his skull if he was not already partly inebriated. He was drinking on Hawke's tab tonight, so he had let himself go a little and had more than he usually would have. After one he had felt pleasantly warm, and after two he felt downright pleased to have come out that night, and so the drinks kept coming. _

_Quickly surveying his surroundings, even with his foggy mind, told him that his friends had disappeared somewhere in to the crowd on the dance floor. Every so often someone from his party would come and attempt to convince him to join them out of the floor; but even if he'd had more to drink than usual he would never have enough to convince him that dancing would be a good idea. He honestly had no idea how to dance to this kind of “music” anyways._

_After deciding he did not particularly care where his friends had gone, blindly assuming that they would remember him when it was time to leave and would not leave him alone at a club all night, he attempted to flag down one of the bartenders. The barkeep either didn't see him or ignored him as a group of women sidled up to the length of the counter._

_That was when he caught the first glimpse of her._

_She was pushing long dark strands of hair away from her face, and smiling brightly at something her friend had whispered to her. Cullen could feel his heart pick up and run rampant in his chest. He was probably staring, but he lacked the presence of mind to look away and quit gawking like some lovestruck teenager._

_She was perhaps the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He barely registered the fact that she was with a group of people, his gaze was fixed so firmly upon her. Her skin was shiny with perspiration, her hair was damp and clung around her ears and neck, and her makeup was smudged around her eyes, but she seemed flawless. The bartenders stuck to the group of women and poured their orders quickly. Upon receiving hers, the beautiful woman stepped away from the line-up to clear some space and cast her dark eyes around the room._

_Cullen did the same. Perhaps she was looking for somewhere to sit and catch her breath? The booths around the outer edge of the club were almost all full, but there was an empty seat on either side of him. Would she come sit beside him? His heart faltered at the thought, but he instantly slid his napkin and glass one seat to the left and tried to inconspicuously shuffle over one. It took everything he had in him not to try and wave her down._

_And, praise every deity there was, she came over and sat next to him._

_Alright, so she was not_ in _the seat next to him, she had courteously left one empty seat between them, but still. She was so close he could see the round brilliant shape of the amethyst pendant hanging around her throat. If he could work up his nerve maybe he would be able to smile at her before she finished her drink and went back to her friends._

_“Are you alright?” she asked suddenly._

_ Cullen's eyes widened perceptibly as he realized the woman  _ had _ in fact spoken to him. Her eyes were trained to his face, her brow furrowed slightly. He almost dropped his glass. _

_Not trusting himself not to say something stupid, especially since his blood was probably at least 50% alcohol at that point, he nodded frantically and turned his gaze down to the half-melted ice at the bottom of his near-empty glass. That's right, he still hadn't gotten the attention of a bartender._

_“Are you sure?” she asked again. “Are you here with somebody?”_

_Again, Cullen nodded. Her eyes continued searching his as he glanced back up at her so he hoarsely responded, “Yes, my coworkers are here. My friends.”_

_The woman smiled at that and shuffled down into the seat directly next to him. “They left you all by yourself here? Alone at the bar? That's pretty boring. And by the looks of you,” she continued, eyeing the four upside down glasses lying before him, “someone should be keeping track of you. Do you... want some company?”_

_Before he could stop himself he was nodding furiously again. She stuck out her hand for him to shake, which he took probably too eagerly and definitely too firmly, and introduced herself as Amelie. He repeated it twice, tasting her name on his clumsy tongue, and smiled widely at her when she nodded and laughed with him. When he gave her his name she repeated it the same way he had, and didn't try to take her hand back when he didn't let go of it immediately._

_Amelie finished her drink quickly and flagged down the bartender again with ease._

_“What are you drinking?” she asked, glancing down at his mostly-empty glass._

_For his part Cullen did his best to register the question but in the end he just smiled at her blearily. She chuckled, “Alright, maybe you skip this round, then.”_

o O o

_Before long, in her company, he found that the repetitive music no longer threatened to cause his head to pound. Amelie had gotten him a glass of water and that had cleared his head up considerably. At least, well enough that he could hold some semblance of a conversation for a while before he started drinking alcohol again._

_For her part Amelie was chatty after just a few drinks. After the first two she looked sleepy, but every one after that caused her to grow more and more animated as they talked. He found himself genuinely enjoying her company. She told him about her job working in marketing, about her friend's break-up being the reason they had come to the bar, about her roommate and her cat. Despite the irrelevant nature of all of these subjects, Cullen was happy to listen. When she asked about him family, he answered her but mostly he tried to steer her back to talking about herself. Not because he was trying to hide anything, but because he could listen to her voice all night. When his friends finally came around to check up on him he had barely paid them any notice._

_However as the night wore on she began to express a desire to return to the dance floor._

_Her friends had come to check up on her too, leaning in close and murmuring in her ear. Cullen turned away while they spoke and downed the last of what was probably his eighth drink. Or was this only his seventh? In any case, Amelie had finished her conversation and was regarding him with pleading eyes. Her lips were moving, but Cullen found himself suddenly too captivated by her expressive mouth to hear the words over the humming in his ears._

_“Please?” she asked again, seizing his hands tightly._

_“What?”_

_“Dance with me!” She squeezed his fingers in hers._

_ He laughed. Long and loud. “Absolutely not! I do  _ not _ dance. Trust me, you would thank me not to if you had ever seen me.” _

_Amelie pouted, sensing that she wasn't going to convince him. “Alright,” she sighed, “but I'm going to hit the floor again for a while. Will you be alright if I leave you here?” He was at least half in the bottle and while she wanted to join her friends for more dancing she didn't want Cullen to get himself in trouble._

_He watched with interest as she reached into her purse and realized that she had pulled out a black marker. She took his wrist and he let her with quiet fascination. Her hands were small and surprisingly cool, maybe from holding her glass._

_In bold black letters she wrote 'CALL' and a number along the inside of his arm, far enough up that he wouldn't wash it away if he had to wash his hands. When she was finished she capped her marker and returned it to her purse. She told him to stay out of trouble, and moved to slide out of her bar stool. Unthinkingly, he quickly seized her chair by the very edge between her legs and dragged her a fraction closer to him. If he slid his hand just a little higher he realized that he would likely brush against her core, but he kept his hand still. Amelie simultaneously froze and flushed bright red, a colour he could see even in the low lights, and she took a hold of his arm to steady herself._

_“Must you go?” he asked her softly, doing his best to ignore his hammering heart._

_She smiled at him sweetly, her blush skimming down her throat and spreading in her chest, as she promised, “I'll come back if you're still here later on. Okay?”_

_“...Okay,” he agreed reluctantly. He let go of her chair and watched her disappear into the throngs of people still bumping and grinding on the dance floor._

_ Perhaps he should follow her? He could give in and embarrass himself at least a little, could he not? He had had quite a bit to drink, after all, and what did he care if his coworkers made fun of him afterwards if it meant he didn't lose the pleasure of Amelie's company yet? But even with the alcohol in his system he did not  _ quite _ feel foggy enough yet to let go of his inhibitions to that extent.  _

_Despite himself, Cullen wanted to know more about her but he did not want to seem over-eager. He saw her amidst a group of people, some of which he recognized from her initial trip to the bar, and several others. He couldn't hope to monopolize her attention all night._

_It was better to let his beautiful acquaintance enjoy herself with her friends. He would hope she would return to see him again later on in the evening._

 o O o

His resolve had only lasted so long, however much he hated to admit it. He did eventually follow her out on the floor in the direction he had watched her wander off, but he could not find the woman he had spent his evening with. He  _ did  _ manage to stumble in to Alistair, however, and that was when their party had decided to return to Cullen's condo since it was nearest to the bar. The walk home had been interesting to say the least, but that was besides the point! The point was– 

“Amelie!” he shouted, his excitement over remembering her name causing him to speak more loudly than he had intended. He quickly cleared his throat and chuckled sheepishly. “I mean– sorry, I had a lot to drink last night. I don't... usually drink like that anymore.”

“Yes, I'm sure,” she laughed. Cullen grinned goofily despite himself. “But  _ you _ weren't at the bar anymore when I went back to find you.” She told him pointedly, as though she blamed him for the fact that they had not been able to meet up again. He hesitated before he admitted that he had gone to find her in the crowd and had ended up leaving. She seemed pleased that he had tried to find her, too.

“Well Cullen, I don't want to be too forward, but what do you say you meet me for breakfast and we try to have a conversation without drinking a keg between us?”

Unable to believe his luck he nodded furiously before realizing that she could not actually see him this time. “Yes,” he said, “yes, I would like that. Very much.”

“Good,” she laughed. He could practically hear her smile. “I'll pick you up in an hour then?”

“Great. I'll see you soon.”

And that was when he heard his friends whooping from outside the door.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaahhh I haven't decided if I'm going to follow this one up with a few chapters leading in to smut, so we'll just see what happens!
> 
> Please leave a comment and/or kudos, they are endlessly inspiring!


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